Page 16 - Australian Defence Magazine Oct 2020

16 NEWS REVIEW
INDUSTRY UPDATE
OCTOBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
OCIUS LAUNCHES LATEST USV
LEFT: Beth is the latest in Ocius’ fleet of Bluebottle USVs.
simplest. The trailer, designed by chairman Mark Bethwaite, who christened the new boat, allows two people with a car to launch a Bluebottle from any boat ramp in Australia.
“Our better funded competitors in America can’t do that,” Dane said. “They need a boat or a massive crane.”
Ocius first used an off-the-shelf so- lar panel mounted on the deck to power the Bluebottles, but the partnership with Praxis Aeronautics, which came about through a chance meeting at the Avalon Airshow in 2019, has proven revolutionary.
“We first built Ocius a foredeck for Bruce,” Katie Donaldson said to ADM. “We’re now contracted to build for Beth.”
“The power management that we sup- plied was first developed through our work on UAVs,” Cameron Donaldson add- ed. “We will be using several of those in the new build.
“The silicon cells that we use are far more efficient that what people generally encounter with domestic or commercial solar. Our manufacturer puts aside the best-performing batches for mobile power applications like ours.”
EWEN LEVICK | SYDNEY
SYDNEY-BASED SME Ocius Technology has officially christened the latest addition to their fleet of Bluebottle unmanned sur- face vessels (USVs). The new USV, named Beth, is longer and larger than previous iterations Bob and Bruce. It will carry Thales Australia towed arrays, a larger winch, and Solar Composite Structures crafted by SA-based Praxis Aeronautics, a start-up headed by siblings Cameron and Katie Donaldson.
“Politically and economically, the oceans are still like the Wild West,” Ocius founder Rob Dane said to a small group of attendees. “And Australia’s responsible for 11 per cent of it. Monitoring it is expen- sive, we don’t get 100 per cent coverage, puts people in harm’s way and the coro- navirus now makes it that much harder. That’s why we’re here.”
The company has a contract through the Defence Innovation Hub to build five of the next generation Bluebottle USVs, of which Beth is the first. Over the next two years, these will be deployed off the coast of WA and the NT to conduct various taskings.
The Bluebottles have significant po- tential in a variety of different roles. A number could act together as a wide-area sonar array to listen for submarines, or a single Bluebottle could act as a ‘gateway node’ between platforms in the air and un- der the surface, such as future unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs) or an undersea surveillance system. The company is cur-
rently exploring this latter possibility in a program with DST Group.
Civilian applications also abound, such as marine and weather monitoring in hard-to-reach areas, GPS mapping or hy- drocarbon monitoring. Charles Darwin University is involved with Ocius in a cli- mate and oceanography project.
One of the Bluebottle’s unique selling points, Dane explained, is also one of its
INSITU PACIFIC AND NOVA SYSTEMS TEAM FOR LAND 129
INSITU Pacific signed a teaming agreement with Nova Systems as part of its Austra- lian-industry-led proposal to supply tacti- cal Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to the Australian Army under Land 129 Phase 3.
“Insitu Pacific’s experienced Australian team and our AS9100D certification under- pin the delivery of a fully compliant and doc- umented system,” Andrew Duggan, Man- aging Director, Insitu Pacific, said. “Our solution is further strengthened by Nova Systems as acknowledged Australian experts in working through all the en- gineering and testing steps necessary
to deliver complex UAS to the ADF. “They will bring this extensive expe- rience and expertise to bear as part of
RIGHT: Inspector General Eberhard Zorn of the German Armed Forces views an Australian Shadow 200.
Insitu Pacific’s Land 129 solution for Army.” “Nova Systems brings the right mix of engineering and next-gen technical skills to the Insitu Pacific Land 129 Team,” Pe- ter Tippner, General Manager Aerospace and Surveillance, Nova Systems, said. “Our team of expert engineers has an in- depth understanding of the customer’s requirements, based on their experience with Shadow 200, and ADF UAS capabili-
ties since 2008. ■
DEFENCE
EWEN LEVICK